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Lisa Simpson
|status = |alias = Jake Boyman"Girls Just Want To Have Sums" Truth Teller Lie Smeller Lady Penelope Ariel Ponyweather"The Dad Who Knew Too Little" Lisa Bouvier (briefly) Raven Crow Neversmiles Big Maggie Princess Helvetica Lisa Flanders|hair = Blonde|job = Student at Springfield Elementary School, CTU Agent, Hall-monitor Former: Babysitter Founder of SpringFace Kids News anchor|relatives = Father: Homer Simpson Mother: Marge Simpson Brother: Bart Simpson Sister: Maggie Simpson Uncle: Herbert Powell Aunts: Patty Bouvier, Selma Bouvier and Abbie Simpson Cousins: Ling Bouvier (adopted) Grandfathers: Abraham Simpson and Clancy Bouvier Grandmothers: Mona Simpson and Jacqueline Bouvier Temporary Foster Parents: Ned Flanders and Maude Flanders (Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily) Ex-boyfriends: Nelson Muntz, Colin, Luke Stetson, Ralph Wiggum, Milhouse Van Houten, Lucas Bortner Stepmother: Amber Simpson Great-uncles: Bill Simpson, Chet Simpson, Tyrone Simpson, Hubert Simpson, Cyrus Simpson, Herman Bouvier, Arthur Bouvier, Chester Bouvier, JoJo Bouvier Great-aunts: Gladys Gurney, Kari Olsen, Cyrus's 15 wifes See the Other relationships section for additional family members and relationships.|appearance = Good Night|mentioned = Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire|voiced by = Yeardley Smith}}Lisa Marie Simpson (born May 9, 1982) is the tetartagonist of The Simpsons. She was named after a train called Lil' Lisa on her parents' 1st anniversary. She is a charismatic 8-year-old girl, who exceeds the standard achievement of intelligence level of children her age. Not to everyone's surprise, she is also the moral center of her family. In her upbringing, Lisa lacks parental involvement of Homer and Marge, which leads to hobbies such as playing saxophone and guitar, riding and caring for horses, and interest in advanced studies. In school, Lisa's popularity is affected by those who view her as a geeky overachiever, which leaves her with only a few friends. She focuses on her goals and strives to reach her potential, and at the age of eight, she is already a member of Mensa with an IQ of 159. Appearance Lisa has yellow skin, blue eyes (although her pupils appear as black dots like the other characters), and blonde, "starfish" hair that is styled into points and matches the color of her skin. She is usually seen wearing a short, strapless orange dress with a zigzag hem, matching orange Mary-Jane shoes, and a white pearl necklace (given to her by Marge). She has had two different outfits for church and family outings: a magenta long-sleeved dress with a ruffled collar and magenta pumps for church, and a baby pink short-sleeved tutu dress with a darker pink belt and collar, and pink Mary-Jane shoes, and she occasionally wears a wide-brimmed hat with the same color scheme with it. At night, she dresses in a turquoise nightgown with a frilly white collar and matching cuffs, as well as turquoise slippers. When Lisa swims, she wears a magenta or red swimsuit. Her hair has been styled out of its star shape a few times, such as in "The President Wore Pearls", "22 Short Films About Springfield ", and "Teenage Mutant Milk-caused Hurdles ", and it is shown to be about chin or sometimes shoulder length. In future appearances as an adult and teenager, her hair "points" are usually worn in a styled back fashion. Despite her average weight, she inherited her father's chubby fingers, which somewhat affects her dexterity. Biography Lisa is quite eclectic in her knowledge and is notably more concerned with world affairs and problems than her cohorts, which has led her to alienate herself from her peers. Lisa also deeply values her integrity, sometimes at the expense of others' needs and happiness, as demonstrated when she cheats on a test in The Wind in the Willows to attain her highest grade of A plus, but later admits her dishonesty to an unreceptive Principal Skinner despite the fact that such a grade allowed the school to gain the extra income it 'desperately' needs. (She later regrades the test as an F.[3]) Also, Lisa was willing to tell everyone about Bart faking his kidnapping attempt to go to a concert, despite the fact that absolutely everybody involved in the case was better off just because she could. Despite her intellect, Lisa has received detention, like her brother Bart, quite a number of times, often because of her rebellious and sometimes bitter attitude and antisocial behavior that is capable of deeply embarrassing authority figures. Although her rebellion against social norms is usually constructive, Lisa can be crazy, cruel, and rebellious at times. When she believes herself to be right she won't admit that others could be as well, and will often force her beliefs onto people. Notably, her increasing sense of moral righteousness regarding her vegetarianism leads her to proselytize, culminating in her spiteful disruption of a "meat-based" barbecue prepared by Homer (an act she comes to rue).[4] At times, Lisa appears to resist certain situations merely for the sake of resisting them, not because of any genuine ideological opposition. She appears to enjoy breaking the norm for its own sake; in one time, she triumphantly declares that she, a girl, would like to join the football team. When it is revealed that there are already girls on the team, she declares her distaste for a sport that would use a pig's skin to make its ball. When it is revealed that the ball is actually synthetic and the proceeds of buying it go in part to charity, she is at a loss for words and runs off visibly upset.[5] She also seems to dislike having her intellect challenged, which is evident on occasions such as when she was temporarily promoted to the third grade or when Miss Hoover gave her a B+ on her final grade for conduct and actually caused her physical harm because of it. Lisa's first word was Bart at two years of age. Despite her high IQ, cuteness and beauty, Lisa does have typical childhood issues, sometimes requiring adult intervention. She once tricked Homer into allowing her to ride the bus alone, only to become hopelessly lost. After his coworkers Lenny and Carl point out that he allowed his daughter to ride a bus by herself, Homer comes to her rescue.[6] Lisa has a Jewish imaginary friend named Rachel Cohen who "just got into Brandeis University." Even with a high intellect, Lisa displays personality traits typical for her age, including obsessing over getting a pony, being addicted to TV, and fighting with Bart. Lisa once got addicted to secondhand smoke to maintain an impressive level of ballet competence; Homer tries to prevent the addiction unsuccessfully, and in the end Lisa overcomes the addiction herself through means of "Hello Kitty" nicotine patches.[7] She also displays a surprising amount of skill in driving, especially for her age, sometimes even taking the wheel whenever Homer ended up distracted from driving.[8] In "The Girl Who Slept Too Little", she struggled with nightmares after a cemetery was moved next to the Simpsons' house. She overcame her fear after spending a night in the cemetery and realized that it was acceptable to suffer from fear despite her intelligence. It was revealed in this episode that Lisa largely had to raise herself due to Homer and Marge dealing with Bart's antics thus ensuring a lack of nurturing for her. Lisa has been known in earlier seasons to have a bit of a sassy attitude. Like Bart and most siblings in families, Lisa has been known to tease Bart herself, examples such as; crushes Bart has developed, or advice on writing to someone (in this one case, his teacher), even just plain sassing him for attention. Deep down inside, Lisa loves her brother deeply. Personality Lisa is an innovative, insightful and extremely intelligent girl, far exceeding the standards of a third grader especially in Springfield. Part of her intelligence is due to being so dissociated from her idiotic father whilst growing up and it was strongly implied that her brains were a result of her grandmother; Homer could never keep up with his daughter's startling intelligence due to his slow wit and stupidly, his laziness and their contradicting vices and opinions caused a strained relationship and she practically grew up without a father figure, specifically not a model one (although Homer probably wouldn't have been much help even if he was involved in Lisa's life). As intelligent as she is, her family never encouraged her gifts and her school lacked the resources to blossom her IQ further but overall Lisa has the most promising future. Since she was a baby, Lisa has displayed intellectual independence from changing her own diapers and solving mathematical solutions when she was only an infant. She could be classified as a child prodigy. Lisa also developed PTSD during a Halloween party at an amusement park. As she walks around by herself, she notices several people dressed as zombies and serial killers, which causes her to go into an extreme panic attack. She cries so much that the park employees sound the alarm and call her a baby. The next day, she refuses to wear her Frida Kahlo costume to school, despite it not being scary. She begins to hallucinate that the Halloween decorations in the school hallway are the theme park monsters and reluctantly goes to her locker. Later, Marge tries to take down the Halloween decorations so Lisa won't be afraid, much to Bart's anger. Marge agrees to take Bart trick-or-treating instead, but they leave the house too late and witness the adults drinking and partying in skimpy costumes. As they return home to check on Lisa, the residents wonder where she is. Lisa then pops out of a coffin to scare them and is wearing her costume, and is now coping with her PTSD. Everyone laughs. Her overall role in the Simpson family is depicted as the voice of reason. Despite her young age, Lisa is a good girl and has a strong sense of right, wrong and morality and she is always there to contradict Homer, Bart and on one occasion Marge whenever they do something reckless, idiotic or illegal, doing her very best to sway them to the path of the righteous due to fearing greatly for her father and brother's immortal soul but her standing as an outsider in her own family cause her to be ignored despite her best intentions. In an argument, Lisa's ethical and logical viewpoint almost always gives her the moral high ground, her family also realize that Lisa is usually right whenever they do something immoral but Homer's tendency to ignore her, uses the excuse of age to send her to her room when they realize that they are in the wrong. In earlier seasons, however, Lisa has been depicted as intelligent yet not as mature due to her squabbling and physical fights with Bart but she has developed into a more practical being yet her young age also makes her sense of right and wrong slightly malleable at times as she has shown to engage in childish and reckless behavior, proving herself to be like any other Simpson but more grounded and mature. Despite her above average intelligence, she displays "average people" tendencies such as obsessing over ponies and teen heartthrobs. Despite her young age, Lisa is extremely passionate about ideologies and other social movements. She supports PETA (although she eats eggs and dairy) and the Free Tibetan movement, is highly against animal cruelty and has adopted a diet of vegetarianism from Season 7 and keeping this dietary regime onwards. She encourages the idea of feminism, women's rights and the crusade against objectification and stereotypes of women. Lisa's role models and ideals are based on Mohandas Gandhi's enforcement of nonviolent pacifism and Emmeline Pankhurst. Whilst her social movements are generally considered to be heroic, Lisa's reasoning is not solely to make the world a better place. A life of being shunned out and ignored by her family has developed attention-seeking traits and a desire to be heard, once going to a dig site solely for the basis to complain about it, an area where she is usually ignored further. She used to force her beliefs on others due to a sense of self-righteousness and moral superiority specifically her vegetarianism but Apu also taught her a degree of tolerance for others beliefs. Lisa is against the ignorance on others behalf, believing the truth is the truth and is unable to be dissuaded no matter what it was, which she learned from Marge. Without anyone else caring she continued to pester that the town founder, Jebediah Springfield was in actuality a murderous pirate and only refrained herself from revealing the truth when she realized how it brought the town together. At her school, Lisa is considered to be a nerd because of her bookish and quiet nature. A teacher's pet and proud of it, she is depicted as an introvert with few friends and those she does have are as much as a nerd as she is. Her lack of popularity is generally purposeful yet her lack of social skills and different hobbies to what is considered fun to the rest of the girls leads her to want more friends. On one example she changed her personality to fit a more rebellious nature like Bart and actually gained an entourage of friends at the Flanders beach house but when her true academic nature was revealed, they continued to befriend her due to viewing her as a kind, gentle person rather than just a nerd. Lisa has had a number of boyfriends despite her status of a geek such as Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Luke Stetson and Colin. Extremely unathletic, she fails at sport completely, that and her liberal stance and high intelligence gives her little bonding ground with her peers and Homer who is also passionate about sports and connects with Bart more for this reason. Lisa is so weak that she could barely through a piece of paper into a rubbish can that was one away. However, she also displayed an uncharacteristic level of hand-eye coordination when she caught an incoming hockey puck from Apu and proved herself to be an extremely hockey player when she was a goalie. Similar to Bart, Lisa's high academic intelligence and her desire to go far in life is greatly driven by her future goals. Bart never focused on his book work as he and basically everyone else knew that he would amount to very little when he grew up whereas this is the opposite for Lisa who saw the potential in her life to achieve great goals. When her career aptitude test came back that she would likely become a homebody when she grew up and her music teacher told her she could never achieve her dream of a jazz musician on account of "stubby fingers", crushed her dreams. After this, the quality of Lisa's work and behavior declined drastically as Bart's improved exponentially after his career aptitude came back that he would become a police officer, such as refusing to go to band practice, encouraging the bad girls to deface Skinner's puma statue and being rude to her teachers. She went as far to steal everybody's Teacher's Editions, a line that even Bart Simpson would not cross. Lisa would have undoubtedly become as an even worse rebel than that of her brother if Bart had not taken the blame for her crime. That said the prospect of a dull future also encourages Lisa to study further rather than immediately omit defeat as she did her very best to not become a housewife like Marge when their paths became very similar. Overall though, Lisa's tendency to lash out towards her family is based on the beliefs that they don't understand her rather than actual spite. This proves to be true as jazz is the only thing that expresses her inner thoughts and how she is feeling whilst her family only silence her creativity further due to their great annoyance of her saxophone. She often embraces relationships with other paternal figures that encourage her to embrace her passions to fill the void that her real lazy and uninterested father left. When she became depressed in the second season and none of her family seemed to understand the reason behind this, opened up more to the troubled jazz musician, Bleeding Gums Murphy who told her to sing what she felt helped her emotional state greatly. She became deeply close to her substitute teacher, Mister Bergstrom who again noticed and encouraged her intelligence to blossom. Over time, Lisa, although embarrassed by her family, is no longer ashamed to be a Simpson. One of her negative traits would be her penchant for narcissism. In one of her daydreams, she envisioned herself as bringing about world peace and being revered by world-famous scientists, chanting in her presence "we're not worthy". She prides herself on her intelligence and integrity but if her ego is at risk, displays a willingness to breach her morals such as sabotaging her rival Alison's diorama at the school fair, humiliating her in front of her peers. Even so, Lisa's conscience is too strong to commit an unethical act and not punish herself such as giving herself an F for her test which she cheated in and apologizing to Alison for her act of sabotage. She is one of the few characters in Springfield without a signature trademark or catchphrase, shown specifically at the end of Bart Gets Famous when Marge, Bart, Homer, Nelson, Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns, and Barney all do their trademarks of the characters and wait for her to do anything, Lisa dryly replies "if anyone needs me, I'll be in my room", leading Homer to state "what kind of catchphrase is that?" Intelligence It is mentioned that Lisa has an IQ of 159.[9] She is a high-ranking member of Mensa Springfield. Lisa demonstrates an early intelligence by changing her own diaper as an infant. When unable to attend school due to a teachers' strike, she suffered a sort of "school withdrawal" as she has an emergency box in case of a teacher strike. She begins to panic when she can only think of two synonyms to the word "stop". She constantly wants people to "grade her" as Marge gave her an "A" just to make her stop whining, and invents a perpetual motion machine that Homer describes that it just "keeps going faster and faster". He goes on to chastise her, saying, "In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" [10] Like the rest of her paternal family she can pick up language fairly quickly, she was able to learn fluent Italian from Milhouse in a fairly short amount of time. Lisa also has a pathological compulsion to show off how smart she is and to always be the best. One example is when she tried to answer a question for Principal Skinner the "smarty pants" way he told her he wanted a different answer. Lisa requested finishing the "smarty pants answer" with notable panic in her tone. Skinner refused but she finished it anyway. Furthermore, this was during a meeting in which Lisa was demanding she gets a better grade for an assignment, which also included her insulting her teacher. Another example showed her hyperventilating when Allison Taylor demonstrated being superior to her and when she insulted/downplayed Meg Griffin when the latter demonstrated talent with a saxophone. Also, when Homer suffered several simultaneous heart attacks due to Lisa refusing $12,000,000, he incorrectly thinks it was a mere $12,000. Lisa again chose to show off her smarts by correcting this, seemingly not caring it would cause Homer even more severe heart attacks (which it did). Since Lisa doesn't suffer from insecurity and is not subjected to misogyny, this could be attributed to a tendency towards narcissism. Beliefs Lisa's political convictions are generally leftist and rather liberal. She is a vegetarian and a supporter of the Free Tibet movement. Lisa yells "Free Tibet!" after winning the school spelling bee. An "End Apartheid" poster can be seen in her bedroom in episodes from the early 1990s. She, like her mother, supported Democrat Mary Bailey over Right-Winged Mr. Burns; the duo revealed that Mr. Burns was a liar and Mary Bailey wins in a landslide, the only known supporters being Waylon Smithers, Bart, and Homer. While still supportive of the Christian church she was raised in, Lisa is now a practicing Buddhist following her decision to follow the Noble Eightfold Path.[11] Though apparently not an adherent, she mentions that she considers Wicca "very empowering".[12] She also appears to be a big believer in science, even stating in one episode when she was scared of the graveyard outside her bedroom, that she only believed in science. Vegetarianism Lisa turned ovo-lacto vegetarian due to ethical reasons.[4] This was also hinted in a flash forward in which we see Lisa as a vegetarian in the future.[13] On Paul McCartney's demand, she has stayed vegetarian still. According to the episode, "The Real Housewives of Fat Tony," Lisa occasionally has trouble adhering to the lifestyle and has been shown eating things such as gummy candy and marshmallows which are made from animal marrow and gelatin, although some vegetarians do eat gelatin products on occasion. She also finds the foods to taste bland, she is desperate enough for tasty vegetarian foods she would force Bart to locate highly valuable truffles so she could eat them instead of selling them for a lot of money. Music Lisa's musical abilities are extensive: she sings with a powerful voice (she once entered a singing competition and won) and has been seen playing the acoustic six-string,[14] electric bass guitar, accordion and piano proficiently. But her great love is playing jazz on her baritone saxophone. Her musical inclinations were nurtured by her relationship with the late jazz musician Bleeding Gums Murphy. She most likely inherited her musical ability from Homer, who is also musically inclined. She can also play the trumpet. Independent Learning She is fluent in Italian (learned from Milhouse Van Houten before going to Italy), as well as some French and German verbs (with the help of a German verb wheel [15]), as well as Spanish. In 'The Great Simpsina' she studied under the great Raymondo to become a skilled magician. Life as a student Lisa attends Springfield elementary alongside students such as Bart Simpson and Milhouse Van Houten And alongside other gifted pupils, like Martin Prince and Database, she is one of the most academically advanced students at the school and is often praised by staff members for her achievement. She is well behaved but despite this, she has received detention twice, from Dewey Largo and an unnamed teacher, in Grift of the Magi and Lisa's Date with Density. 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